« JB (initials of pastor Johan Brauners) On March 30th 1679 has been born to the honorable Lannersch Klesgen (Nicholas) from Holzthum and to his wife a young son his name is John James the godfather is the manly and ...... John James Schaub presently administrator at Schuttbourg castle the godmother is Jacobs Susanna from Consthum. S »

Comment:

The letters at the beginning of the record are JB, the first letters of the pastor's name and a kind of initials. The S at the end is an abbreviation of "solvit", Latin for "has payed".

This inscription relates a birth, not the baptism which is usually referred to in church records and which had of course been administered by pastor Brauners.

The vocabulary is old German, although some words are still used today even in Luxembourgish, like "Klesgen" for Santa Claus and "Petter" and "Giedel" for the godparents.

It can be assumed that John James was the eldest son of Klesgen (although we don't know for certain as the parish register for baptisms, marriages and deaths started only in 1677), which might have been the reason for the choice of the Schuttbourg administrator as a godfather and confirms the fact that the family lived on Schuttbourg castle's farm in Holzthum. As a matter of fact, a child was given in those days always the name of his godfather or godmother.

The farm in 2008 (Photo: Claude Lanners)

The farm in Holzthum on which John James Lanners was born has disappeared as the site has been transformed and rebuilt during the three centuries elapsed since his birth, but we know where it stood: it is the place with the house left to the church. In 1801, a member of the de Hoefnagle family that owned the Schuttbourg at that time, Albert Joseph de Hofnagle from Bastogne, bought the farm and came to live here with his family. Two of his daughters married local men, among them Félicité who became the husband of Jean Wagner in 1813. Félicité de Hoefnagle is an ancestor of today's owner, Anne Thiellen.

Anne Thiellen with the built-in old cupboard and the cast-iron stove (Photo: Claude Lanners 2008)

The farm around 1940 Photo: archive

The Holzthum church (Photo: Claude Lanners 2008)

Holzthum on the Ferraris map; the church is the building on the square in the center of the village (ANL Ferraris map 1771-1777)